Omar Sharif is a moron.

As President Reagan was so fond of saying: “Here we go again.” Another famous person trashing America based on completely made up or distorted statistics. Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, a has been actor, was quoted in an interview with MERI – a Middle Eastern press monitoring organization – as stating:

“I lived in America for a long time. Only 10% of all Americans have a passport. In other words, 90% never left America. They don’t know anything.”

Sharif goes on to say that he prefers going to the neighborhood sheik. According to Sharif Arab nations are made up of sects that are resistant to becoming democratized. I did a quick fact check on Google and the best estimate I have for percentage of Americans who have passports is 27, not the 10 that Sharif quotes. That is typical of persons who are always criticizing the country, exaggerating and distorting the facts. For one thing, until very recently passports were not required for travel to Canada, Mexico and many other countries in the world. While it is the case that actually traveling to a country is the best way to know about a people and its culture, it is not the only way. Mediums such as books, travel guides, DVD’s, the Internet and television provide a means to learn quite a lot about a country, its people and its culture. So to say that Americans know nothing is not only wrong but a blatant lie. If you want to criticize a country and its people at least have the courtesy to have a legitimate criticism. I wonder what percentage of the Egyptian population has traveled abroad or even been allowed to travel abroad? Egypt is not a democracy and I suspect that very few of its citizens have traveled abroad. So if you apply Omar Sharif’s argument, Egyptians don’t know anything either. I expect this is the case for a lot of  Arab countries. If I am wrong Mr. Sharif, please feel free to correct me. After all, I am an American citizen and therefor I don’t know anything.